Graphic Design?

Not for Me!

Graphic Design?

Not for Me!

My First Step into Graphic Design

My next goal for this class was to become more familiar with developing graphics to go along with units, lessons, etc. I thought that while I had not done this before, it would be easy. Boy was I wrong! I now know why it takes my husband, who designs websites as a side business, four hours to fix a "little" problem. I first decided that I would make a graphic for my upcoming unit on Poetry. I had to decide between using Paint.net, which is on my school laptop, or Adobe which is on the home iMac. I decided on Paint.net, for a few reasons.

My husband has OCD when it comes to these sorts of things, so I didn't want him having access to my graphic while I was working on it. I knew the first one wouldn't be perfect, and I wanted that to be okay!

I wanted to use a program that all of my students have available on their student devices, so I can teach them how to use it as well.

The process of making this graphic was long... and frustrating. I decided this is NOT something I would like to do all of the time! When you spend one hour moving single letters around... something has to give! Here are a few pictures of my process.

Start Simple.

I had a great writing teacher once that said to start small. To start simple. So that's what I did. I created a base "layer" of the yellow background, and a second layer simply with the word "poetry." I didn't have a plan from here, but I figured the word would guide me.

What else?

I decided to add a third layer with an oval shape, and to put within the shape all of the key words we would be looking at within our Poetry unit. I was able to learn to use the Pixel Selection tool and the Selection Move tool to move around the words to make it look nice.

Finally!

This is what took me the longest. I added three phrases that I teach kids when it comes to Poetry (Read it, Break down, Analyze). I wanted these words to curve around the outside of the oval. Once again, using the Pixel Selection tool, I could select each individual letter in order to move it, and rotate it to match the curve of the oval. This took me an hour!

Start Simple.

I had a great writing teacher once that said to start small. To start simple. So that's what I did. I created a base "layer" of the yellow background, and a second layer simply with the word "poetry." I didn't have a plan from here, but I figured the word would guide me.

What else?

I decided to add a third layer with an oval shape, and to put within the shape all of the key words we would be looking at within our Poetry unit. I was able to learn to use the Pixel Selection tool and the Selection Move tool to move around the words to make it look nice.

Finally!

This is what took me the longest. I added three phrases that I teach kids when it comes to Poetry (Read it, Break down, Analyze). I wanted these words to curve around the outside of the oval. Once again, using the Pixel Selection tool, I could select each individual letter in order to move it, and rotate it to match the curve of the oval. This took me an hour!

The Finished Product

What do you think?

Here's what I think:

It's not perfect. Some of the individual letters within the words around the outside of the oval are crooked. And, I wish I had made them bigger. However, I can't figure out how to change them!

Its not bad for my first graphic! I think I did a pretty good job, considering I just dove in and taught myself what to do. (Don't tell my husband, he wanted to teach me... but I didn't think I could handle that!)

I am looking forward to having this available for the kids. First of all, it is their unit in a nutshell. What is the unit? Poetry. What are the vocab words? Rhythm. Lyric. Ode, etc.... How should you read poetry? Follow the three steps!